Your Guide to German Language - language learning tips and free online German lessons. Hyde Flippo taught German for 28 years at the high school and community college levels. Technically, he retired in 1996, but he is still teaching - now on the Web.
Modal verbs are essential. They are so called because they indicate a modality, meaning a probability, desire, ability etc. the speaker wants to convey. Find out more about the modal verbs mögen, müssen, dürfen on our site.
Some prepositions take on the accusative case, some the dative and others the genitive. That's simple enough and straightforward. But then we have the two-faced prepositions, the so called dual-prepositions or doubtful prepositions who take on two of these cases depending on the sentence. There are nine of them...
Most of the time you need to use subjunctive II in order to form the conditional in German. But there are a few other ways, such as with the preposition bei, that will provide you with a conditional sentence as well. See more on the conditional...
When I was growing up, one expression that was heard often among students was Der hat einen Vogel im Kopf or Sie hat einen Vogel, which basically means: "He/She is crazy." This is just one of many other common German expressions that have animals in it. See more of these expressions in German Animal Expressions.
The word order in German sentences can be very different from that found in English. For instance, the placing of verbs in a sentence can be tricky at times. Then you have smaller words such as conjunctions that can also change their position. In this short article find out more where certain conjunctions should be placed.
Do you know the difference between bitten and bieten or sitzen and setzen? These are just some of the verbs in German that have similar pronounciation and therefore get confused by German learners. Find out more about these verbs in this article.
Have you ever come across the comic strip where a guy finds another fellow shaking all over while holding a juice container in one hand? When asked why he is shaking, the guy replies, while pointing to the juice container: "It says here to shake before serving." That's exactly something Till Eulenspiegel would do! Till Eulenspeigel is the literary German buffoon who always rubs people and understands things the wrong way. Find out more about Till Eulenspiegel.
How much do you love your dog? Well, in Winterstein in the seventeenth century, a rich couple loved their dog so much, they erected a monument in honor of him after he died. From that incident, the German expression Da liegt der Hund begraben, took on a double meaning, unfortunately though, a meaning not as honorable as the dog. See more on this expression...
The German verb nehmen means 'to take' and can mean a whole lot of other things when prefixes and prepositions are added to it. See how versatile this verb and its related words can be in this article and then test yourself with this quiz.
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